This chapter articulates the central argument (why a new legal form for social enterprises in India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore is needed and what it should entail); explains why the four Asian jurisdictions are selected as case studies; and examines the purposes of social enterprises and their two main business models. The chapter then provides an overview of social enterprises in the four Asian jurisdictions including: their operating domains, the drivers of the development of social enterprises, the challenges faced by them, the three main conflicts of interests afflicting them, and the legal forms used by social enterprises. Importantly, the chapter shows that the legal forms available to or used by social enterprises in the four Asian jurisdictions are unable to properly address the conflicts of interests, and thus, a new legal form is required.

Historical geography is one of the disciplines associated with toponymy and historical toponomastics. It aims to investigate the settlements and land uses of a place with evidence from archival sources and can help to analyse the remote origins of place names. This is evident in the example of Bistagno, a village located in Piedmont, northwest Italy. A number of scholars have used historical-geographic methods and sources to account for its name, with varying degrees of success. Methods and sources from historical geography can also be used in more contemporary contexts. For example, another case study shows how written records and newspapers were utilised to study the many toponyms renamed after Romania turned Communist – with the aim of celebrating the Communist ideology, figures, and worldview. This was followed by an extensive renaming in Romania’s post-Communist/post-Socialist era, when the new leaders removed links to Communism. In the case study of Singapore, the authors trace the names and naming processes connected with three toponyms in the relatively young nation, by using maps, archival documents, and books. The new field of study, historical geographic information systems, brings a new tool to the historical analysis of environments and geographic areas.

This chapter shifts from the historical approaches of studying place names to synchronic toponymy, which deals with place names in a particular moment in time and in a specific area. The synchronic toponymist collects a dataset, or corpus of toponyms, categorises them, and searches for common naming patterns. He/she may also study the semantics and semantic structure of the place names according to the social and political realities of the analysed time period. The major case study in this chapter discusses the naming practices and toponymic classification in Singapore’s public places. It explains how the naming of places and streets, in various stages of the city-state’s history, have been influenced by issues of governmentality and politics, as well as by a sensitivity to its multiethnic population. In the second half of the chapter, the authors focus on critical toponymies, an area of research that has gained traction in recent years. Place names are neither ‘neutral’ nor ‘innocent’, but are brimming with social, political, and cultural meaning and significance. To this end, the authors also explore issues connected with the ‘commodification’ of place names and how toponyms can become tourist attractions.

Singapore was one of the first movers in Asia to legally facilitate the recognition and use of advance directives in end-of-life decision-making. The Advance Medical Directive Act (AMDA) came into force in 1997 to emplace a legislative framework to enable individuals to exercise greater control over the medical care for their terminal illness. Notwithstanding extensive consultative and parliamentary deliberative processes, the Advance Medical Directive facility never really took hold in clinical care for the terminally ill in Singapore. Although uptake rates since 1997 have risen appreciably, rates of implementation are too low to have any measurable impact. This chapter therefore evaluates the merits and weaknesses of the Singapore AMDA framework. It then traces the evolution of anticipatory end-of-life decision-making policy from its original transactional mindset to the current, process-oriented and ‘communications’ model. The question then evaluated is whether advance directives (in statutory or other forms) have any continuing role in the current push towards more widespread advance care planning under the national ‘Living Matters’ programme spearheaded by the Singapore Agency for Integrated Care.

Chapter 6 extends the discussion of multilingual development to the so-called New Englishes as symbolic systems that developed in the former colonial territories and continued to develop after the collapse of the British Empire in the newly created independent polities. More precisely, the focus here lies on outer circle Englishes in the sense of Kachru (1985). The New Englishes are analyzed from the perspective of their surrounding multilingual ecologies and not, as is more customary, in terms of hermetically delineated national varieties of English. On that account, the chapter focuses on recent – and also more historical – multilingual outcomes of globalization where English plays a prominent role, has been incorporated into the local ecologies, interacts with many other languages, and shows or is beginning to show traces of localization or nativization. Case studies include Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai. The chapter thus brings together the key issues discussed in the preceding chapters – globalization, migration, urban areas, multilingual advantages or effects, cross-linguistic influence, language acquisition and learning, language policies, identities, and attitudes – and pivots them on contexts of particular prominence.

This chapter opens the “black box” of the Lion City and looks at the extent to which its government has internalised its investment obligations. With its highly efficient bureaucracy, manageable size and strong commitment to the respect of international law, the Singapore experience highlights the challenges that investment treaties can pose, even in the best of rule of law and governance conditions. Although Singapore offers a “most likely” case study for testing the plausibility of claims regarding the effects of investment treaties on the rule of law, aspects of the Singaporean experience cast doubt over the extent to which these measures are well-calibrated to the situations that commonly give rise to investment disputes. Moreover, analysis of the development of these measures casts doubt on the actual role that investment treaties – as opposed to other factors – have played in instituting them.

This chapter on the Singaporean leniency programme holds that various elements point to its effectiveness. The leniency programme guarantees immunity for a leniency applicant prior to an investigation, immunity could be obtained by the first leniency applicant once an investigation has started, and granting leniency to subsequent leniency applicants is at the discretion of the Singaporean enforcement agency, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS). Furthermore, leniency plus, whereby extra reduction can be obtained for revealing participation in another cartel, and the fast-track procedure, whereby extra reduction can be obtained for admitting to the fact, have been introduced as well. It is now also possible for a cartel to be exposed through a reward or whistle-blowing scheme, though this scheme is not available for persons active in the infringement. Because of these elements, the leniency programme has contributed to eight of the fifteen cartel infringement decisions. Some of these cases have led to record high fines. Another element worth mentioning is that some of the leniency applications were only submitted after active solicitation by the CCCS.

This chapter focuses on shareholder voting and engagement of Singapore-incorporated companies and companies that are listed on Singapore Exchange. It explains the relationship between directors and shareholders, the formal and informal means of shareholder engagement, and shareholder rights relating to voting, asking questions and receiving information. Quite apart from the ‘law in the books’, the practice of shareholder engagement is illustrated with contentious and challenging examples, including related-party transactions, the delisting of proposals amounting to the expropriation of minority shareholders, dual-class structures and ‘say on pay’.

This chapter reviews the history and development of psychological assessment and testing in the region of Southeast Asia. Malaysia and Singapore are the focus of the chapter as both countries share similar yet significant historical, racial, and cultural backgrounds. Given that the field of psychological testing is more prominent in Western countries, it is natural for countries within Southeast Asia, or in this chapter, Malaysia and Singapore to adapt to Western cultures. The major question will then be pointing toward the validity and reliability of most psychological assessment and testing if they are used within Southeast Asia, with various native languages co-habiting within the societies. Thus, the aim of this review is to provide an update regarding the cross-cultural validity of psychological assessment in Southeast Asia, as well as to introduce instruments that are appropriately and culturally adapted and developed.

The United Kingdom’s idea to adopt a stewardship code sparked a global shareholder stewardship movement. Unsurprisingly, Singapore as a corporate governance leader in Asia, adopted a stewardship code. Based on a superficial textual analysis, the Singapore Code appears to be a near carbon copy of the UK Code. However, this Article, which provides the first in-depth comparative analysis of stewardship in Singapore, demonstrates how Singapore has turned the UK model of stewardship on its head. Rather than enhancing the shareholder voice of institutional investors, shareholder stewardship has been used in Singapore as a mechanism for entrenching its successful state-controlled and family-controlled system of corporate governance. This development has been entirely overlooked by prominent international observers and would be beyond the wildest imaginations of the original architects of the UK Code. Viewed through an Anglo–American lens, this use of “stewardship” may suggest that Singapore has engaged in a corporate governance sham. However, this Article argues the opposite: it appears to be a secret to Singapore’s continued corporate governance success and provides a much-needed Asian (as opposed to Anglo–American) model of good corporate governance for Asia.

Chapter 7 widens the lens of analysis to consider anti-corruption efforts in a diverse set of authoritarian regimes: Cuba, Malaysia, Rwanda, Singapore, and Vietnam. These short case studies are analytically useful as “plausibility probes” to assess the applicability of my theory beyond just the main East Asian cases. They also serve as test cases for alternative explanations, such as that quasi-democratic institutions or collective leadership will help authoritarian regimes to curb corruption. Most, though not all, of the anti-corruption efforts in these authoritarian regimes match my theoretical expectations based on whether autocrats had motivation, discretionary power, and state capacity. I also find further evidence against alternative hypotheses. This chapter is primarily based on secondary-source research.

Chapter 5 shifts to the island colony of Singapore, where Australia’s Eighth AMF Division defended the island alongside British and local forces and volunteers in the weeks before its capitulation, suffering greatly as Japanese captives. The chapter describes the dispersal of camps at the fall of Singapore, following the fate of Australian and other Allied soldiers across an emergent camp geography. Its main aim is envisioning the entirety of the island as converted to an encampment through the distribution of Allied camps, including the dispersal of work camps in requisitioned domestic and institutional facilities, exploring how wartime defense and capitulation provided structures for contemporary citizenship.

Chapter 1 lays out the reasoning behind the book and its investigative schema, drawing links with interpretations of incarceration familiar to the discipline. The chapter’s central argument is that the Pacific War’s imperial border contestations were inscribed in those national populations who were alienated or disenfranchised by new hostilities, and that camps treated as border facilities became places for testing cultural boundaries, advancing programs of assimilation but also of prisoner defiance, dissidence and cultural recovery. Case studies are viewed comparatively in order to gain an understanding of the differing physical makeup of each camp environment in the various national sites explored.